Someone Else's War
by solysal
Summary: Any halfway descent excuse for Fire Nation nobility knows the Royal Family's history of handling betrayals, and Mai had been as good as the crown prince's bride-to-be. The solution's obvious: break out of the Boiling Rock. Meanwhile, half a kingdom away, June decides to collect on King Kuei's bounty, and the war for Ba Sing Se is far from over [Season 3 AU].
1. Prologue

Mai couldn't bend. She did, however, have a few scrolls' worth of knowledge on the assorted uses of anything sharper than her baby brother's teeth. She knew a fascinating variety of ways to slit a man's throat, all the folds in her garments that could hide the knives that otherwise hung just above her fingertips, which way to angle her wrists to strike a target smaller than the Fire Lord's crown in a storm. Sitting in her dour prison cell, though, she was having a hard time denying the benefits of being able to fling around fire like a whip.

Of course, they had precautions against that sort of thing (she'd overheard the prisoners saying the cells were crafted from metal than not even molten lava could melt, and if she didn't have to lunch with them on a daily basis she would've asked how they thought their home away from home was forged), so being able to bend was about as useless as having all your knives stripped away. Still, she couldn't help but think it would've been nice.

Ty Lee was three cells over, hands bound in a mesh of wires that had turned her fingers bloated and sallow. "You won't be using those against me anymore," Azula had said with a grin so wide it nearly swallowed her eyes. When Mai realized exactly what the princess had in mind, she had to fight to swallow the bile at the back of her throat.

They weren't even her hands, and she found herself rubbing a dull sting in her palms when she saw the wire digging into Ty Lee's skin. But then Ty Lee tossed her the sort of freakishly sun-bright smile that made Mai want to shield her eyes, and it was just enough. This was worth it. She'd gotten her sleazebag of an (ex)boyfriend off this pointless rock, and besides, at least _she_ could figure her way out of a prison without getting anyone else hurt.

...

It wasn't so bad, Ty Lee thought. Yeah, her hands kept switching from a tingly numb to a needle sharp burn, and her mom wasn't going to be too happy with the way their family had maybe sort of been kicked out of the palace court, but, well, ever since she'd wound up one of the youngest members in a maximum security prison, she'd managed to get awfully popular. Everyone wanted to talk to her, including a bunch of people who knew that even with the new security measures, the warden couldn't possibly have patched every chink in his armor.

Maybe if she'd been the magic lady in her old circus troupe, she would have thrown dust at the cell doors till they sprung open, but the magic lady had pulled Ty Lee to the side one day and whispered that most of her act was staged anyway and would she like to know how you really got out of a box with more locks than bars?

So what if she was circus freak? She'd walked away from it with more than a few tricks up her sleeve-not the least of which were a few ways to break out of a cage.

...

In a melancholy sort of way, Kuei noted that it had taken twenty five years for him to feel truly hungry. A part of him thought it a monumental event, something that he ought to write down if he weren't stranded in a village with nothing more than a bear, a map whose accuracy was currently under serious examination, and nary a vial of ink in sight. The other part of him felt like apologizing, but to who, or for what, he couldn't quite say.

"Well what do you think, Bosco? Should we ask someone for help?"

The bear chewed thoughtfully on a few blades of grass before heaving a contented grumble. Kuei chose to take that as a yes.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Boiling Rock had gone through a few changes since losing some of its more infamous residents. Mai would know. The warden was currently waving the itemized list in front of her face. She would have kept track even if her uncle hadn't just hauled her into an interrogation room for what promised to be a very extensive lecture on 'foolish teenage girls' and 'their utter disregard for familial bonds,' but that was beside the point.

The point was: Mai and Ty Lee were breaking out.

Mai remembered the snarl twisting Azula's mouth as she watched the guards drag them away. Her lips had peeled back to the wet gleam of her teeth, right below her gums. Any halfway descent excuse for Fire Nation nobility knew the Royal Family's history of handling betrayals, and Mai had been as good as the Crown Prince's bride-to-be. If Azula had her way, they would die here.

She had letters from her mother—_my girl, you wretched child, your uncle will watch for you for as long as you are in his care_—but she was only a transfer away from whatever spirits-forsaken dungeon Lord Iroh had the pleasure of calling home, and nobody could ever say for certain what had happened to make the Fire Lady disappear. So Mai bit back her scowl and read.

_Revisions to Boiling Rock Protocol as per the Fire Lord's Advisory Council: _

_The recent prison break from the Boiling Rock has motivated a review of procedure. After discussion of existing safeguards and the means of escape, the committee offers three recommendations._

_First, the transfer of an additional warden to help oversee prison operations._

_Second, the demarcation of the prison into tightly regulated 'zones,' each with their own contingent of the prison population. No communication should be permitted between zones, and guards should routinely select prisoners for rotation from one zone to the next. _

_Third, an overall increase to the number of soldiers stationed at the Boiling Rock. _

_It is our hope that these measures will avert such failures in the future. For if an officer of the Fire Nation cannot hold the esteem of the few disgraced enemies left to their watch, perhaps our dreams of empire are overwrought. _

Her uncle, she noticed, was still talking. He'd probably taken that last line to heart. "Can you believe it?" he spat. "An additional warden? An increase to the number of soldiers? It's as if they're completely unaware of their own damn war! Where will those people come from, I wonder? Will they just a pluck a handful from the front lines?"

Mai offered a carefully neutral shrug. "Easier in theory" could fill a library; jailbreaks and prison reforms just happened to catch the familial fancy. That and working around awe-inspiring levels of nieces and boyfriends doing the wrong things at exactly the wrong time.

"Do you have any idea of the trouble you've caused? Do you even care?"

She tipped her head toward the light, bangs hooding her eyes, baring the slow flutter of her jaws as she swallowed. Her uncle sighed and motioned to the guards.

Her escort was carelessly gentle. As she walked, she imagined herself breaking the loose grip on her arms, cutting past the slow clank of locks opening and closing. It was only later, alone in the threadbare dark of her cell, when she let herself say what she knew no one believed.

"I do."

That's why she had to talk to Ty Lee.

...

Kuei's hands itched: in some measure from the rope, but even more so for want of paper. He needed, well, a number of things, but most of all, a list. Ba Sing Se, far-flung and unconquerable, had always condensed into the clarity of his advisors' referendums. His court's longstanding betrayals aside, he still made sense of the world through parchment and ink.

Long Feng would laugh. From the palace to back roads, from a crowded merchant's district to an alleyway floor bound and gagged—no mystery there, esteemed majesty, just a variation on a theme. _No. _No. His mother had despised that sort of circular despair. He needed to think. Easier said than done, even when one of his two kidnappers didn't have him by a fist of hair, but he knew princesses and avatars that had wired a path out of worse.

"You sure this is him, Liao? Doesn't look like much of a king to me." The man tugged from side to side. His knuckles dug against Kuei's scalp, a dull ache against each sharp-toothed pull. "Doesn't look like his poster, either."

"It's definitely him," the other man—Liao, presumably—replied. Waving to where Bosco crouched, fur standing on end, he added, "Come on, Min. Do you know anyone else with a bear?"

"I can think of a few." The words were sleepy, creeping things, strung low from the rafters like they had always been there, if only Kuei had bothered to check. They made him think of dragons yawning, but only half as much as the woman slinking in their wake. "So tell me, what were you planning on doing next?"

Kuei could see her now that she'd stepped into the light; a coiled whip, a black slash of hair—he felt the hold on his head go slack—news to everyone, it seemed. Liao balled his hands, Min set his feet wide, and suddenly, Kuei found himself believing that he could find a way out of this after all.

"Back off, June," Liao said. "He's ours."

June put a hand to her cheek and smiled. "If it were me, I'd knife the bear. You're walking targets, otherwise."

Kuei shook his head. Bosco was an ugly, empty thing in her mouth. If he could just get his ankles under him—he pressed his back against the wall behind him and clenched his torso—Bosco would be fine. Kuei would be fine. If he could just—he struggled to pull his legs into a squat, trying to block out the low hum of June's whip starting to spin—_there!_ (He remembered when Bosco was still his mother's surprise, a downy cub hidden away in the gleam of her eyes.)

"I'd need to turn him into the Fire Nation, then, wouldn't I? Ba Sing Se would be best—" Kuei flinched as June's whip struck the wall above Min's head "—no wonder you boys are in such a hurry. That's five days on an ostrich horse you don't have."

Min lunged towards her, or at least, towards where she had _been_. Kuei didn't think it was fair that she could sidestep the punch and sustain the momentum in her whip to land a square hit to Min's temple, but he had to admit, the sound of Min hitting the ground was immensely satisfying.

"Min!" Liao shouted.

"Liao, Liao," June said, hooking the tail of her whip into loop. "See the tip? Shirshu hair. He'll be fine. You on the other hand, well, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

Kuei breathed against the spiny burn in his thighs and started dragging himself up.

...

The bell rung once, twice, thrice, and the guards in Ty Lee's end of the Boiling Rock cafeteria trickled out. What was it Mai's uncle had said? Two for visitors, three for prisoners, and, well, he'd forgotten to mention the alarm now that she thought about it. Or maybe he hadn't needed to. Alarms sort of had a way of explaining themselves: all that flash and bang couldn't mean things were _right_.

For now, at least, the bell meant that even if one of the other guards saw her waving to Mai—hands stretched big and wide so she could see—they'd be too busy keeping their eyes on everyone else to do anything about it. Mai sat down across the table from her, eyes moving down from Ty Lee's wrists to her fingertips.

"They're still a little tingly," Ty Lee said. "I think it'll be another week before I can chi block again, but I can do a lot of other things!"

Mai nodded. "How?"

"Oh, the wires?" she shrugged. "The guard who cut them mentioned one of my sisters, so I think my family had something to do with it? Azula could have changed her mind, too. I don't think she really meant it. At least, not the way everyone thinks she did."

"I guess you'd know more about that than I would."

It was a little strange, seeing the length of Mai's arms in the lamplight. The prison robes left them open in a way Ty Lee hadn't seen outside a few hours in a beached sun. She wondered if Mai worried at her knuckles like this every time the air around her went watery and slack.

"You didn't have to help me, Ty Lee," Mai said, at length. "It was my choice."

Mai's fingers bunched into the kind of knots that made Ty Lee ache to slide her palms in between and roll out. Mai wouldn't like it though, and, anyway, the wires had left ridges that kept catching whenever Ty Lee tried to trace the chi paths she could see riding under another person's skin. "I know," she said instead. "I did it because I wanted to. We're friends, Mai."

"What does that make Azula?"

Ty Lee couldn't hug Mai, not with a table between them, not most days, really, so she smiled even though it hurt a little and said, "We're friends, too. That's why I helped you."

Mai sighed and looked away. Ty Lee tilted her head, trying to catch Mai's expression. Azula used to say anyone who called Mai indifferent just didn't know where to look. Mai's face wasn't a place for firestorms, but Ty Lee could always pick out the light of something burning. When she saw the twist to Mai's mouth, she grinned.

"Why don't we find a way out of here, then?" Mai asked.

"I was wondering when you'd ask!"

...

It was, perhaps, a little discouraging that in the time Kuei had managed to pull himself to his feet, June had incapacitated both of his kidnappers. They came to just as she finished tying their hands behind their backs. Kuei cast a desperate glance towards Bosco. Seated on his hind legs, licking his paws—the bear evidently saw no further cause for concern. He supposed that made one of them.

"If you try to follow me?" she asked, giving Liao's chin a firm shake.

Liao jerked away. "We'll wake up in the middle of the Si Wong Desert."

"With no water. Always a pleasure, boys."

June cracked her neck and folded her whip, then started towards him. He knew he was a forgettable king with a forgettable face, that he would have had no hope of conjuring the dignity of his position even without a rope between his teeth and across his hands, but he'd hoped—he'd wished he could have done _something_—

"Well," her voice cut in, "it was definitely admirable of you to try and escape." Her arms were on either side of his head. She'd leaned in to get a better look at the gag, and the details of her profile flashed out of the dark. When her calluses skimmed the nape of his neck, Kuei tried not to shudder.

He pictured the scales of her mind balancing possibilities; it reminded him too much of dreaming his mother's fairytales to life. He strained for something more concrete. One: Bosco was all he had of the kingdom he'd left tottering inside a dragon's mouth. Two: June needed him alive to collect his bounty. He could make something of that.

The gag fell away, and the words were already pouring out of his mouth. "If you want me alive, you won't lay a finger on Bosco. I won't stand by and watch him be hurt."

June pulled back and blinked. "Why would I do that?"

"You said—"

"Oh, you were listening to that? I can handle being a walking target. Besides, how else would I be able to prove it was you?" She checked to make sure the bindings on his hands were secure. "Come on, it's time for you to meet your ride."

Kuei imagined there was an order to all this, just somewhere he couldn't place. "I don't understand."

June grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged until he fell into step behind her. "Let me put it this way, Your Majesty. There's a bounty on your head, and I'm going to do everything I can to collect."

...

Growing up, it wasn't hard to see Ty Lee was a loved girl. Mai accepted it like it was just another sun in the sky. Dawn broke the night, and the world fell for Ty Lee. Things hadn't changed now that they were older. Ty Lee already had bits and pieces of what Mai wanted to tell her, and more besides.

"The reforms are more dreams than reality right now," Mai said. "My uncle's tearing his hair out trying to get things together before the new warden arrives next week."

"It's not just the new warden, you know. The Advisory Council's coming, too."

"Really?" Her uncle had failed to mention that. She could understand his train of thought. Throwing the crown princess's favor back in her face didn't exactly fall in line with the actions of a good daughter. Her family considered her a liability, best kept out of sight and in the dark.

They were right, of course. The Advisory Council—too valuable to sacrifice, too bureaucratic for heroics—would make the perfect hostages.

"Well," Ty Lee frowned, "the Advisory Council and a bunch of new guards."

Mai's eyes narrowed. She hadn't expected the Fire Lord to agree to the Boiling Rock's demand for extra men so easily. Not with a war on his hands. Not with Sozin's Comet practically hugging the horizon.

Ty Lee propped her face in her hands and started humming the same as she did when she was little— when another one of the girls in the schoolyard caught her by the arm and whispered secrets in her ear. "Do you know why they rang the bell?" she asked.

"New prisoners," Mai answered, then stopped. "Lots of new prisoners." The Fire Lord wasn't going to put his plans on hold because of a few prisoners. Mai brought her thumb to her lips and bit a smile around the nail. He didn't have to. Why pull your best and brightest from the front lines when you could simply rearrange the ones at home? "They're consolidating. All the worst enemies of the Fire Nation, all in one place."

"Mmhmm!" Ty Lee beamed. "We're going to be making a _lot_ of friends soon."

If anyone besides Ty Lee had told her she'd be engineering a jailbreak around some of the same people she'd had imprisoned, Mai wouldn't even have bothered laughing. But Ty Lee—Ty Lee won people over like breathing. She said she could see conversations change colors right before she joined. Mai guessed it was her way of admitting she was dangerous.

"You know, people say a lot of things about us," Ty Lee mused, and there was fierceness to her grin that reminded Mai of the knives she used to keep up her sleeves, "but everyone agrees we won't be here long."


End file.
